amiibo has been an undisputed success for Nintendo, with 5.7 million figures having been sold worldwide since they launched last November.
Building on that this year, Nintendo have confirmed that they will launch “amiibo in the form of cards,” while also looking to launch a free application for Wii U that will allow players to use amiibo to unlock time-limited NES or SNES games.
“In contrast to the current figure-shaped amiibo available, we will make amiibo in the form of cards this year as one of our future plans as Mr. Miyamoto mentioned at the Corporate Management Policy Briefing in October,” Iwata discussed at the company’s Financial Results Briefing.
He continued, “We are also planning a free-download app for Wii U in which you can enjoy NES and Super NES games with your amiibo in the first half of this year. With this app, once you tap your amiibo on the NFC area of the GamePad, you will be able to play highlighted scenes of one certain title for NES or Super NES. You cannot play the entire game due to a time limit, but another tap of the amiibo will enable you to try another highlighted scene in the game. We hope that when you tap your amiibo, the quickly changing game scenes will pleasantly surprise you and make you feel as though you have just exchanged a game cartridge.
“Even though only Wii U has been compatible with amiibo so far, we are making steady progress on compatibility with the Nintendo 3DS platform. New Nintendo 3DS is equipped with NFC as a standard feature. For existing Nintendo 3DS systems, we will release an external NFC reader/writer in summer this year. On the software side, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS started to support amiibo after a software update in February.”
Nintendo confirm amiibo cards to launch this year
